Attention for #BiggerIssues

Tuesday, 3 November 2015, by Rosie Kenyon

The fog lifts and we realise not much has happened. We dismay over how we should have better things to talk about - to be fair, typing a 140-character tweet shouldn’t take too long. But still, the campaign from CALM neatly and strongly demonstrates the #BiggerIssues that may be getting missed in our daily discussions. To read in their email that, ‘42% of 2000 men polled had considered taking their own lives’, is shocking.

To me, the campaign is brilliant – it is effective, creative, multi-channel optimised, social media friendly; it is actually getting people talking about a difficult and widespread issue.

The bottom line; suicide is the single biggest killer of men aged under 45. This campaign from CALM, in partnership with Lynx, is raising awareness of this, and it’s punchy too. It swiftly takes a snapshot into the little things that get big attention, mainly on social media channels. Making us a little ashamed but mainly, I think, empowered. If we as a nation can get #foggy trending on Twitter then surely we can get the #BiggerIssues out there.

A bit of celebrity support doesn’t go amiss either:

Raising awareness, showing support and getting it out of the dark fog that surrounds it is what must happen for such a big issue issue (of high numbers of male suicide). So let’s spread the word and all talk #BiggerIssues.